The new Q70 bus to and from LaGuardia made its much-anticipated debut last Sunday. The 70 is part of a new push by the MTA to upgrade public transit at the busy airport in Queens. It started last year when the MTA bolstered M60 service from Manhattan with the addition of frequent, double-long buses.

As predicted here at length when the Q70 proposal got rushed through a public hearing process last April, the MTA’s bold effort to speed up trips for luggage-toting airline passengers has been met with loud and varying opinions on the dual action nature of what was implemented. As seems to be the case with most government proposals subject to public input, the loudest reaction has come after an indifferent constituency slept through its narrow window of opportunity to voice opposition. The wake up has come now that it’s too late.

I boarded the maiden voyage of the Q70 at LaGuardia at 12:15 AM Sunday. A few public transit geeks armed with video cameras recorded the historic run while airport workers settled in for the ride. The bus gets on the Grand Central, merges onto the BQE and exits at Broadway. With no traffic, the trip takes less than ten minutes. The former (now modified) Q33 (with the same end points) took at least double that time.

I’ve now taken two round-trips and a one-way on the new Q70 and I certainly can’t quibble with its efficiency. It does exactly what the MTA envisioned. It moves people coming off both subway and commuter trains at Woodside and Jackson Heights to the airport (and back) in times never before seen via public transit. It’s a boon to tourists staying in Manhattan and travelers coming from Long Island via the LIRR.

My problem with the way it went down is the MTA’s evisceration of the Q33, reducing it to a local route that terminates short of the airport. Thousands of airport employees who made life decisions to settle along the Q33 in East Elmhurst and parts of Jackson Heights have now lost their reliable, longtime way to work. The Q70 is great but it does people who live in the swath of territory covered by the Q33’s northern stretch no good at all. The MTA’s public information campaign steers these people to the Q72 which offers sporadic service and forces a transfer to other buses. That’s a sham. If the MTA was truly committed to its stated effort of improved public transit at the airport, it would retain the 33’s existing route and allow it to continue circulating among the Delta, US Air and Central terminal buildings.

Flash back to that public hearing in May. I was the only attendee to speak specifically on this problem. Nobody else challenged the MTA’s flawed data on the Q33’s ridership demographics which totally low-balled the percentage of those going to and from the airport. Yet now that the change is implemented, those affected are up in arms. Yelling at the bus stop about the new lay of the land does no good now.

For me personally, it’s a wash. I face a longer walk to the bus (Q70) but get a much quicker ride that makes up for it. I’ll continue taking the 70, although my heart remains loyal to the good, old Q33. Why? First and foremost, I’m uncomfortable with the speeds of the Q70 as it flies down the ramp to the BQE dodging potholes along the way. Some of the drivers are pedal to the metal while its human cargo hangs on for dear life without a seat belt. The buses used on the route are not configured for such high speeds. Those who sit in the rear of the bus (or standees) will go flying if it is forced to stop suddenly from the 50+ mph cruise mode. Loose luggage brought on the bus by travelers who choose not to stow it on the rack will see their bags end up as projectiles. Also gone is the beauty of the sights and city chaos seen in the heavily populated neighborhoods traversed by the 33.

Also problematic is the haphazard configuration of the new Q70 stop outside the 74th and Rosie transit hub. It’s a free-for-all. A sign has gone up designating the stop but there’s no room for those waiting for the bus on a congested sidewalk that includes taco trucks, steel garbage pails and freebie newspaper boxes. Riders congregate in a cluster with no real place to line up. The bus lanes on the east side of the station remain reserved for the 33, 49 and 69. There’s no sense of order or fair grouping of the line for the 70. Given the stated mission of the 70, there’s a slew of luggage in the mix too. It’s a mess. When a neighborhood-bound 70 from LaGuardia drops off at Rosie, those exiting the rear of the bus open the doors only to be blocked by the clutter on the sidewalk. The MTA needs to grab one of the three aforementioned bus lanes to make this work. Their deployment of information agents at all of the 70’s stops in the early days of this new service is encouraging but they need to raise the commitment to this new route by adding a real, sensible stop for passengers in Jackson Heights.

The description of the Q33 as it has appeared on this web site since inception has now been modified to reflect its current state.

-Mets radio broadcasts will appear on a new dial spot starting next year. Since 1987, Mets games have been carried on WFAN (660 AM) which is far and away the most popular station for fans of sports radio in New York City. This displacement from WFAN isn’t the preferred outcome for the Mets. But because the Yankees draw a larger audience and the opportunity for significantly more advertising dollars, the FAN’s owner CBS Radio is pushing aside its long relationship with the Wilpon family and opting to carry the Bombers instead. All this will mean for Met fans is an inferior radio home to tune into but otherwise little adverse impact unless the games end up on WOR-AM which has a scratchy signal here in Queens and elsewhere. ESPN radio’s NYC affiliate 98.7 FM would probably be the best outcome for Met fans given its powerful reach. I’ll miss the very entertaining immediate sequences sandwiched around Met broadcasts via Francesa and Stevie Somers on WFAN but the old experiences will be replaced by new ones. No doubt it will take some getting used to among fans of both teams. Whereas my radio dial rarely ever leaves its resting spot at the 660 AM mark, it will now get more of a workout as I come and go to hear Met games only to return for Mike and Schmoozie. There’s some talk that the transition opens up the prospect of breaking up or replacing the existing booth teams of Rose/Lewin (Mets) and Sterling/Waldman (Yanks) but we shall see. I would hope both duos remain intact. Immediate reaction to the change on WFAN has included lots of Yankee fans saying the new marriage links the best team with the best station. That may be true at the moment, but WFAN may regret the decision come 2015 and beyond when the Mets are the town’s best, most exciting club. For the record, it was Newsday’s Neil Best who broke news of this whole story on Tuesday. Best consistently beats his ink-stained rivals at higher-circulation outlets (Sandomir, Mushnick and Raissman) and did so again with this scoop.

-Tuesday’s primary election in New York City produced some surprising outcomes. The grip of the Democratic Party machine was broken resoundingly in several instances. Most notable was the possible runoff-busting win by mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. Party stalwarts stood early and prominently with Christine Quinn and Bill Thompson, yet it was de Blasio’s campaign that caught fire in the last month with a wide cross-section of New York City Democrats who appear to crave a sharp turn away from two decades of rule by Giuliani and Bloomberg. The editorial boards of all three major city daily newspapers endorsed Quinn and the powerful teacher’s unions backed Thompson. The deBlasio campaign made painstaking efforts to appear unattached to the machine, touting only the friendship of dynamic 1199 SEIU boss George Gresham. Other union bigs lined up behind the pair believed to have a better chance. De Blasio’s election night victory party was held at a Brooklyn indie rock club. What you saw on stage as de Blasio acknowledged the building enthusiasm for his unabashed left of center views was a remarkable contrast to anything we’ve seen in a city-wide race since Freddy Ferrer won the nomination in 2005. It’s exciting. So were machine-busting defeats for Brooklyn D-A Joe Hynes and scuzzball ex-assemblyman Vito Lopez in Bushwick. These types of outcomes restore faith in the process. Credit to the 1 in 4 registered Dems who bothered to vote. They got it right. When entrenched incumbents and machine-backed frontrunners with campaign money coming out of their ears never get beat, it gets old. Voters paying attention should feel some confidence going forward that their vote matters. My ballot was cast at about 2:30 PM at P.S. 222 in Queens. There was no line and I was in and out in five minutes. Because of a compressed election schedule that includes a run-off date three weeks from now and the general five weeks after that, the board of elections brought back the old knob and lever devices for this vote. Gone were the $100 million worth of optical scanning machines introduced in 2010. The elections board doesn’t trust its optical scanners and so the 50-year-old mechanisms got pulled out of storage. I thought Weiner’s concession speech was wonderful and I think we’ll see him make a comeback if he can somehow turn his freak button off. The day before the election, I was approached by a Reshma Saujani supporter at the bus stop. He asked me to vote for Saujani in the public advocate’s race. I told him I supported Dan Squadron instead. “We respect him,” the man said as he handed me a flier.